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Myriam Gurba

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Remezcla

Remezcla: ‘A Harm-Reduction Strategy’: Biden Was Elected, Now What?

November 13, 2020 by Myriam Leave a Comment

‘A Harm-Reduction Strategy’: Biden Was Elected, Now What?
November 13, 2020
K Romero*, a Mexican immigrant living in Pennsylvania, remains vigilant. After the 2016 election, Romero became active with a local progressive organization, but a commonplace obstacle soon emerged. The organization privileged the needs of white Democrats above everybody else’s, leaving women of color, like Romero, out in the proverbial cold. Racial exhaustion triggered Romero’s flight from the group but because she understands that authoritarian threats linger, she feels pulled back to activism four years later.

“I’m not going to sit and watch as fascism continues to rise,” she tells Remezcla. “I’m ready. I want to organize with a network of like-minded women of color. I’m just clueless about where to start.”

Many people living in the United States share Romero’s activated yet disoriented sentiments. Four years of overt racism, misogyny, homophobia, transphobia, xenophobia, religious extremism, anti-intellectualism, and anti-science policies have yielded a situation that mess doesn’t begin to describe. The forces strengthened by the Trump cult continue to endanger us and, while the election of Joe Biden signals some symbolic and material change, many activists and organizers understand a Biden administration not as a one-stop electoral solution but as a harm-reduction strategy. As historian Thomas Zimmer has written, the uphill battle of transforming the United States from a “white Christian nation, in which white Christian men are at the top” to “a multi-racial democracy that abolishes patriarchal rule” continues.

Read more at Remezcla.com

Filed Under: News, Remezcla, Uncategorized Tagged With: magazine article, politics, Remezcla

HOW THE TERM ‘ESSENTIAL WORKER’ OBSCURES THE COST OF RACIALIZED HUMAN LIFE

October 5, 2020 by Myriam Leave a Comment

farm workers

How the Term ‘Essential Worker’ Obscures the Cost of Racialized Human Life
October 5, 2020
“The Latino community is suffering a lot right now,” says Arnulfo Romero. The former field supervisor lives in Santa Maria, California, an agricultural community that, depending on which way its sea breeze blows, smells of strawberry, broccoli, or diesel. The town is small by California standards, populated by about 107,000 residents. Most, like Romero, are Latino of Mexican origin. Many are also Indigenous (primarily Mixteco).

While the Santa Maria Valley’s berry crops have sweetened the region’s reputation, its large concentration of COVID-19 infections now brings notoriety.

“Santa Maria’s number of coronavirus deaths has been higher than anywhere else in Santa Barbara County,” Romero laments. “The only place that looked like it was going to outpace Santa Maria was the prison in Lompoc. But it got worse here.”
remezcla.com

Filed Under: News, Remezcla Tagged With: magazine article, race, Remezcla

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